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Babylonian Astral Science in the Hellenistic World: Reception and Transmission

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Babylonian Astral Science in the Hellenistic World: Reception and Transmission CAS® e SERIES Nummer 4 / 2010 Francesca Rochberg (Berkeley) Babylonian Astral Science in the Hellenistic World: Reception and Transmission Herausgegeben von Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Center for Advanced Studies®, Seestr. 13, 80802 München www.cas.lmu.de/publikationen/eseries Nummer 4 / 2010 Babylonian Astral Science in the Hellenistic World: Reception and Transmission Francesca Rochberg (Berkeley) In his astrological work the Tetrabiblos, the astronomer such as in Strabo’s Geography, as well as in an astrono- Ptolemy describes the effects of geography on ethnic mical text from Oxyrhynchus in the second century of character, claiming, for example, that due to their specific our era roughly contemporary with Ptolemy [P.Oxy. geographical location „The ...Chaldeans and Orchinians 4139:8; see Jones 1999, I 97-99 and II 22-23]. This have familiarity with Leo and the sun, so that they are astronomical papyrus fragment refers to the Orchenoi, simpler, kindly, addicted to astrology.” [Tetr. 2.3] or Urukeans, in direct connection with a lunar parameter Ptolemy was correct in putting the Chaldeans and identifiable as a Babylonian period for lunar anomaly Orchinians together geographically, as the Chaldeans, or preserved on cuneiform tablets from Uruk. The Kaldayu, were once West Semitic tribal groups located Babylonian, or Chaldean, literati, including those from in the parts of southern and western Babylonia known Uruk were rightly famed for astronomy and astrology, as Kaldu, and the Orchinians, or Urukayu, were the „addicted,” as Ptolemy put it, and eventually, in Greco- inhabitants of the southern Babylonian city of Uruk. He Roman works, the term Chaldean came to be interchan- was also correct in that he was transmitting a tradition geable with „astrologer.” from the Babylonians themselves, which, according to a Hellenistic Greek writers seeking to claim an authorita- Hellenistic tablet from Uruk [VAT 7847 obv. 11, Weidner tive source on astrology or other esoterica often cited 1967, 19; see Fig. 1], associated cities and lands with generic ancients, such as „Chaldeans,” or „Egyptians,” zodiacal signs, and, in particular, attached the sign Leo and Arnaldo Momigliano once said that, „the mass of to the land of Akkad, another term for the southern part writings claiming to be translations from Oriental lan- of Mesopotamia. guages were mainly forgeries by writers in Greek. What circulated in Greek,” he continued, „under the names of Fig. 1: VAT 7847, an astrological tablet from Seleucid Zoroaster, Hystaspes, Thoth, and even Abraham was Uruk in the collections of the Staatliche Museen, quite simply faked, though no doubt some of the writ- Berlin. ings contained a modicum of „Oriental” thoughts com- bined with Greek ideas.” [Momigliano 1975, 17]. Within the mass of unreliable and sometimes wholly erroneous attributions to Eastern wise men, however, are legitimate Greek translations of Egyptian temple literature, and especially meaningful evidence ist traceable for the absorption of Babylonian astral scientific tradition in the West following the Macedonian conquest. Indeed, Babylonian sciences seem to be the only part of Mesopotamian scribal culture to have penetrated the Greek world, surviving into Late Antiquity despite the Ptolemy’s Orchinians, who were „addicted” along with end of cuneiform culture itself. the Chaldeans, also appear in other Greek accounts, The story of the Hellenistic transmission of Babylonian 1 CAS® e SERIES Francesca Rochberg (Berkeley): Babylonian Astral Science in the Hellenistic World Nummer 4 / 2010 astral sciences has two quite different accounts, the Still, there were scholars in the early 20th century, such Hellenistic Greco-Roman one, which tells in all its as Carl Bezold and Franz Boll, who explored then unreliability how Greek and Roman writers saw their recently edited cuneiform astrological texts for parallels astronomical and astrological heritage from the East, in Hellenistic Greek. David Pingree later expanded the and a modern revision, based on cuneiform texts. The investigation of the transmission of ancient Near modern account itself has two distinct aspects, or perhaps Eastern astral sciences to include astrological and omen phases. In the first phase, the recovery and exposition literature not only in Greek and Latin, but in Aramaic, of the cuneiform astronomical and astrological texts Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Demotic, and Sanskrit allowed modern scholars to gauge ancient Greek and as well. [Pingree 1998, 125-137] Despite these efforts, Roman claims about the Chaldeans against original and those of, for example, the scholars associated with sources for the first time. Most dramatic was the discovery the Warburg Institute, to promote the study of astrology of certain numerical parameters already known from as an important dimension of art and science in the West, much later Greek astronomy. F.X. Kugler first established the interdependent nature of these disciplines in the the ultimate Babylonian origins, for example, of the cuneiform material was not emphasized until relatively parameter for the mean synodic month [29;31,50,8,20d] in recently. This latter phase in the modern account of the Ptolemy’s Almagest. Later, this parameter was identified legacy of ancient Mesopotamian science to the Greek in Copernicus’ De revolutionibus, and Otto Neugebauer and Greco-Roman worlds is based upon an expanded showed the use of this same value in European calen- conception of science in antiquity, one that no longer dars deep into the Renaissance, as attested in the 15th sees science in decontextualized bodies of knowledge century Book of Hours of the Duke of Berry [Neugebauer or as a process of the discovery of the truths of nature, 1989, 402]. but rather in the cultural practice of inquiry and as an Perhaps the most widely known result of Assyriological engagement of specific historical communities with the scholarship in the early part of the 20th century was that physical world as they saw it. This conception draws the ancient Mesopotamia came to be known as the cradle of distinction between astronomy and astrology in a different (Western) civilization, the site of the origins of urbanism, way from that which sees the former as science and the literacy, and statecraft. Somewhat less well publicized latter as non-science, focusing instead, for example, on was the realization that Babylonia was the site of the nature of their predictive goals as a criterion of dif- the foundation and origin of Western astronomy. This ference. realization was based on the discovery both of a long The basis of the Babylonian astral science tradition that tradition of empirical celestial observation in the city of later came to be of significance for Greek scientific wri- Babylon from roughly the eighth to the first centuries ters of the Hellenistic period can be said to begin with B.C.E., and the development of a fully theorized and the Assyro-Babylonian scribes of the 7th century B.C.E. predictive mathematical astronomy, emerging in and their later counterparts, scribal professionals of the roughly the 6th century and continuing through the late Babylonian temples of Babylon and Uruk. These Hellenistic period. Despite holding such a position at the scribal professionals concerned themselves to a great Creation (of the West), Babylonian astronomy in its extent with detailed lists of signs with their correlated early reception into the history of science was viewed events of public or private nature. The body of celestial as a kind of scientific miracle within an otherwise non- signs corresponded by and large, but not exclusively, to scientific primitive belief system consisting of divination visible phenomena in the heavens, i.e., of the moon, and astrology. This narrative was based on the tendency sun, planets, and stars. Both groups styled themselves to unify when it comes to science (i.e., it is about nature keepers of this tradition of astral science, which.in not culture), and to leave other aspects of intellectual extant texts dealing with lunar and solar eclipse omens culture from the Cradle to take up a more „indigenous” is traceable to the late second millennium. The scribes, character. however, imagined the celestial divination tradition to 2 CAS® e SERIES Francesca Rochberg (Berkeley): Babylonian Astral Science in the Hellenistic World Nummer 4 / 2010 have come up through the ages, from the god of wisdom and the celestial phenomena commanded the attention Ea himself and the antediluvian sages, who passed the of the poets, who from the time of Hesiod had sung of tradition of celestial and other divination along to future the celestial signs and of the revolving year.” [Evans generations of scribes. Within this ancient scholarly and Berggren 2006, 92 -100 and 227-230] More community, and over many centuries, arose such deve- recently, Reviel Netz, with respect to such works as lopments as predictive astronomy and genethlialogy, or Eratosthenes’ Hermes and Aratus’ poetic version of birth astrology, but always in dynamic relation to the Eudoxus’ Phaenomena, has commented on „the special existing tradition of celestial omens known as Enuma- role for the skies” in Hellenistic science, that „these Anu Enlil. Even the Hellenistic Babylonian scribes who after all serve, at the same time, as depository for produced astronomical texts viewed themselves and mythical references, and as literal, scientific objects.” their work as part of this divinatory textual tradition, as [Netz, 2009, 181] shown in this colophon from an ephemeris for lunar The phenomena had similar multivalence in Babylonian eclipses, written in 191 B.C.E. science, that is, they were objects of empirical investi- gation and mathematical analysis and they were signs, On eclipses of the moon. objects of interpretation that came of a belief in a mode Tablet of Anu-bel-sunu,- ˇ lamentation priest of Anu, son of Nidintu-Anu, of communication with the divine through such signs. descendant of Sin-leqi-unninni- of Uruk. Hand of Anu-[aba-utêr, his In both cases celestial phenomena were scientific son, scri]be of Enuma- Anu Enlil of Uruk.
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